Author Topic: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?  (Read 33878 times)

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #160 on: October 10, 2018, 05:19:55 pm »
There's loads of really interesting posts about 'Agile' from page 3 onward on this thread so not going to quote them all.

Since getting PRINCE2 certified I have began getting very VERY interested in Agile Values and Principles.  Defo looking seriously in taking the 'APMG (AgilePM)' or 'Prince2 Agile practitioner' certifications next.

People said Prince2 qualification opens doors and hell they were right.  Once i got Prince2 qualified a few weeks back i started applying for jobs and have just had a really good initial phone interview for a Home Based Delivery Manager role for a Digital transformation company based in London. Most of the time is spent on government sites and it pays twice the salary I'm on now!!!  It also helps I am already NPPV3 and security cleared which is a stipulation for this role.

Anyhow, The job description says Scrum certification (Product Owner or Master) is essential.  I haven't got any Scrum certs and nor does it say anything on my CV whatsoever about Scrum.  I didn't dare mention Scrum on the call and I'm praying they will be prepared to take me on without this and maybe even put me through the training.

Either way by the end of all this I'm going to have PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner,  Agile Practitioner and Scrum Master (CSM).  That should just about do it.

Offline BigAl24

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #161 on: October 19, 2018, 05:12:27 pm »
Sorry lads I've gone to the dark side and yesterday secured a Business Analyst position at my current organisation. I felt in terms of my grand career plan, it was the next natural step. Had a phone call with my manager's manager today and been booked onto a 2 day Agile Foundation course with QA on Monday which I'm really looking forward to.

If anyone has any Agile hints or tips before then, I'm all ears!

Have a good weekend, fellow RawkITes.
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Offline Slick_Beef

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #162 on: October 19, 2018, 08:39:54 pm »
Got certified in SAFE (Scaled Agile Framework) this week. Work paid for it so thought it was worth it. I enjoyed the course, the trainer was very good, and I like that our whole department is really diving headlong into Agile. The only negative is that it the certificate has an expiry date 1 year from now and supposedly I would have to pay to take another test this time next year, which I think is outrageous.... amazing business model that, I bet the make a fortune from it  :wanker

Offline McSquared

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #163 on: October 19, 2018, 10:33:18 pm »
Any network engineers on here? I have had ccna routing and switching on and off for 10 years and after doing it 3 years ago, moved on to ccna voice and passed. I recently recertified using icnd2 exam, so kept ccna voice and r&s alive. I really want to step up and study and take the ccnp route exam now. Main reason is i have been at the same level for a long time, second reason, a lot of network jobs seem to be aimed at ccnp accreditation. The problem i have is limited exposure to 'real/production' networks as I'm not really a network practitioner. That being said i have an awful lot if exposure to lots of different technologies, Linux, sql, Windows server, sip, voip, vmware, cisco switches/routers, ip multicast, hp servers/chassis based blade, voice recording. I'm considering getting into something a bit more focused, like network engineering.

Any advice appreciated.

I design service provider networks. What do you want to know? Passed ccna in 2001, ccnp in 2002, ccip in 2005, also passed ccie written in 2010, but never took the lab. I recerted these every year until this year, and will now let them expire, meaning that i will only have a jncia qualification left (along with my still valid mcse in windows nt4 😂). These certs are just a way in the door, and i know many ccna/ccnp/ccie who are total blaggers. Most of the good engineers i know have no certs at all these days. You can always spot the blaggers as they always have on their cv routing protocols - rip, ripv2, igrp, eigrp, ospf, isis and bgp, and have also worked on tcp/ip, ipx/spx, appletalk and banyan vines 😂. As you say, you will probably need ccnp to get in at a decent level net eng,  but then its all about experience and real world knowledge for me after that. However, you would stand a good chance if you have a solid understanding of automation i.e. python, ansible, salt, as that is where the job is going, and people don’t just eant cli jocks anymore. Also, you can simulate almost all network operating systems with vm’s these days, so easy to get experience. You can build an entire isp using juniper vmx on a laptop. Have you thought of doing something different like aws architect? That is the wild west, and where the money is at, and if i could be arsed, that is what i would focus on myself
« Last Edit: October 19, 2018, 10:36:39 pm by McSquared »

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #164 on: November 2, 2018, 01:31:44 pm »
Any of you lads or lasses got any MCSA or MCSE certifications?

I'm looking into taking on the MCSA: MS Dynamics 365 certification path

This is with a view to project manage Dynamics 365 implementations in the future.

any advice welcome :)

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #165 on: November 2, 2018, 04:42:11 pm »
Any of you lads or lasses got any MCSA or MCSE certifications?

I'm looking into taking on the MCSA: MS Dynamics 365 certification path

This is with a view to project manage Dynamics 365 implementations in the future.

any advice welcome :)

I've got the Office 365 MCSA. Wasn't that interested in it but we were rolling it out at my company and they wanted me to do it.

It's not technically hard but a lot of Powershell commands to memorise.

Offline kevlumley

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #166 on: January 2, 2019, 11:36:32 pm »
I design service provider networks. What do you want to know? Passed ccna in 2001, ccnp in 2002, ccip in 2005, also passed ccie written in 2010, but never took the lab. I recerted these every year until this year, and will now let them expire, meaning that i will only have a jncia qualification left (along with my still valid mcse in windows nt4 😂). These certs are just a way in the door, and i know many ccna/ccnp/ccie who are total blaggers. Most of the good engineers i know have no certs at all these days. You can always spot the blaggers as they always have on their cv routing protocols - rip, ripv2, igrp, eigrp, ospf, isis and bgp, and have also worked on tcp/ip, ipx/spx, appletalk and banyan vines 😂. As you say, you will probably need ccnp to get in at a decent level net eng,  but then its all about experience and real world knowledge for me after that. However, you would stand a good chance if you have a solid understanding of automation i.e. python, ansible, salt, as that is where the job is going, and people don’t just eant cli jocks anymore. Also, you can simulate almost all network operating systems with vm’s these days, so easy to get experience. You can build an entire isp using juniper vmx on a laptop. Have you thought of doing something different like aws architect? That is the wild west, and where the money is at, and if i could be arsed, that is what i would focus on myself


Sorry i only just noticed this reply, which is a bit slack. I bought the CCNP study guide and i'm going to give it a go. Build some networks on GNS3, in vmware and see if i can gain some experience from there. But really need to get into a job where it is what i do daily and focus on that.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #167 on: January 8, 2019, 04:40:38 pm »
thinking of going contracting for Umbraco/sitecore roles. but unsure, everytime i read a job description they seem intimidating.
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Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #168 on: January 30, 2019, 10:18:41 am »
Guys

I'm currently a Project Manager in the Telecomms/Unified Communications field.

Bit of a general question here but looking to get myself some additional certifications to accompany my PRINCE2 certs.

I work from home and pretty much everything is done remotely.  I am ideally looking for a role that gets me out and about to customer sites on a regular basis with plenty of travel.

What are the sought after certs these days?

I was considering AWS or Azure maybe?

any thoughts welcome.

Offline Graeme

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #169 on: January 30, 2019, 10:40:31 am »
Amazon do a Cloud Practioner certification which is a good starting point. It isn’t overly technical but gives a good insight into the features of AWS. Do all their self study, think the exam is £90

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #170 on: January 30, 2019, 10:55:59 am »
Amazon do a Cloud Practioner certification which is a good starting point. It isn’t overly technical but gives a good insight into the features of AWS. Do all their self study, think the exam is £90

That was exactly the course I was look at doing Graeme. Nice one.

Have you done it?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #171 on: February 2, 2019, 08:18:55 pm »
That was exactly the course I was look at doing Graeme. Nice one.

Have you done it?

I've done it. The course done by Acloud.guru is good, and you can get it cheap if you buy it via Udemy.

Offline Graeme

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #172 on: February 2, 2019, 08:27:18 pm »
That was exactly the course I was look at doing Graeme. Nice one.

Have you done it?

I’ve started going through all the Amazon self paced study stuff but not that far into it yet.

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #173 on: February 6, 2019, 01:59:52 pm »
I've done it. The course done by Acloud.guru is good, and you can get it cheap if you buy it via Udemy.

Are you doing it for professional reasons or just to expand your knowledge base?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #174 on: February 6, 2019, 07:42:58 pm »
Are you doing it for professional reasons or just to expand your knowledge base?

Bit of both really, I wasn't asked to do it for work and I don't work with AWS at all in my current job. It was something I was interested in and wanted to potentially move into in the future.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #175 on: February 6, 2019, 09:59:16 pm »
I actually got the same course off Udemy during a discount. If I like it might consider moving towards that in my next job as I'm stuck in a proprietary application company for now.
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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #176 on: February 6, 2019, 10:19:21 pm »
I design service provider networks. What do you want to know? Passed ccna in 2001, ccnp in 2002, ccip in 2005, also passed ccie written in 2010, but never took the lab. I recerted these every year until this year, and will now let them expire, meaning that i will only have a jncia qualification left (along with my still valid mcse in windows nt4 [emoji23]). These certs are just a way in the door, and i know many ccna/ccnp/ccie who are total blaggers. Most of the good engineers i know have no certs at all these days. You can always spot the blaggers as they always have on their cv routing protocols - rip, ripv2, igrp, eigrp, ospf, isis and bgp, and have also worked on tcp/ip, ipx/spx, appletalk and banyan vines [emoji23]. As you say, you will probably need ccnp to get in at a decent level net eng,  but then its all about experience and real world knowledge for me after that. However, you would stand a good chance if you have a solid understanding of automation i.e. python, ansible, salt, as that is where the job is going, and people don’t just eant cli jocks anymore. Also, you can simulate almost all network operating systems with vm’s these days, so easy to get experience. You can build an entire isp using juniper vmx on a laptop. Have you thought of doing something different like aws architect? That is the wild west, and where the money is at, and if i could be arsed, that is what i would focus on myself

Im about to finish CCNA R&S having found an internal move at work (work for an ISP). My plan after that is to get comfy with Juniper as we use them for most of our core pops and gateway routers. We use Cisco too but mostly for management routers.

After that I want to spend some time on automation and network programmability. Not sure where to start in terms of resources but I know there are some good courses on Udemy from David Bombal. I've seen Hank Preston is also trying to push this with loads of free content on Cisco Devnet. I guess that will keep me busy for this year at which point I want to try go for CCNP, but only once I've had at least a year to bed in at work.

AWS interests me but I have no idea how cloud interacts with networking. Like how do these 2 areas converge and how can AWS benefit a network engineer?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #177 on: February 11, 2019, 08:14:36 am »
Im about to finish CCNA R&S having found an internal move at work (work for an ISP). My plan after that is to get comfy with Juniper as we use them for most of our core pops and gateway routers. We use Cisco too but mostly for management routers.

After that I want to spend some time on automation and network programmability. Not sure where to start in terms of resources but I know there are some good courses on Udemy from David Bombal. I've seen Hank Preston is also trying to push this with loads of free content on Cisco Devnet. I guess that will keep me busy for this year at which point I want to try go for CCNP, but only once I've had at least a year to bed in at work.

AWS interests me but I have no idea how cloud interacts with networking. Like how do these 2 areas converge and how can AWS benefit a network engineer?

Yeah it can.

Look up Paas, Iaas and Saas. Also look up Naas.

With AWS there is plenty of infrastructure - Perimeter services, Firewalls (Known a Security Groups) and a lot of virtual kit including VPNs, Security and the option to build your own or include other elements (Such as a DDOS service)
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Offline McSquared

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #178 on: February 17, 2019, 10:08:48 am »
Im about to finish CCNA R&S having found an internal move at work (work for an ISP). My plan after that is to get comfy with Juniper as we use them for most of our core pops and gateway routers. We use Cisco too but mostly for management routers.

After that I want to spend some time on automation and network programmability. Not sure where to start in terms of resources but I know there are some good courses on Udemy from David Bombal. I've seen Hank Preston is also trying to push this with loads of free content on Cisco Devnet. I guess that will keep me busy for this year at which point I want to try go for CCNP, but only once I've had at least a year to bed in at work.

AWS interests me but I have no idea how cloud interacts with networking. Like how do these 2 areas converge and how can AWS benefit a network engineer?

A good way to start with automation is to get yourself a juniper vmx router and run it as a VM. Juniper has a great netconf api, and they also publish their own netconf client for python called pyez, for which there is loads of documentation and examples. After that you can focus on getting up to speed on python using some generic couses on udemy (last one i tried was about crypocurrency). Most python automation uses yml for information input and jinja2 for templating. Automation is about doing a few different tasks lime pushing generated config to a device, but also pulling information via netconf rpc, parsing it and doing something useful with that info. When you get more skilled you can branch out into frameworks like ansible, salt or stackstorm, which are really just extensions to python.... personally, I prefer just python. Some vendors also have rest api’s, so good to know a little about web dev too like html, css, javascript and frameworks like flask if sticking with python

For AWS, then naturally there are interfaces to networking. For example, you would need to connect to aws direct connect using bgp. You could also install some vendor vms in there like vmx, vsrx, csr1000v, vasa and do some stuff like vpns. I think having an understanding of cloud infrastructure however is more the point as it adds strings to your bow, and gets you a move into better jobs/positions... as does automation
« Last Edit: February 17, 2019, 10:14:59 am by McSquared »

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #179 on: August 9, 2019, 08:39:00 am »
Cos good ones are really hard to find! Could say the same about PMs to be honest ;D

A lucrative career path in that area is agile coaching, cos most people can't do it properly!

thought of this post when i came across this job ad!

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1408423737/

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #180 on: August 9, 2019, 10:34:29 am »
thought of this post when i came across this job ad!

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1408423737/

;D

It doesn't actually say what the teams are working on, I guess it must be LFCTV Go and the shop stuff.

If only I'd volunteered when our place offered scrum master training!

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #181 on: August 9, 2019, 10:42:23 am »
;D

It doesn't actually say what the teams are working on, I guess it must be LFCTV Go and the shop stuff.

If only I'd volunteered when our place offered scrum master training!

You turned down Scrum master training Claire?

Ouch!

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #182 on: August 9, 2019, 10:49:26 am »
it's as our teams have grown, we used to all be in one small office in Croydon and did a single scrum. Now, there's... actually have no idea how many teams, but we're spread across 6 offices in 4 countries and each team requires a scrum master. In some cases it'll be a product manager or a team lead but there were opportunities to do scrum master training so we had good coverage.

I was moving to do full-time remote at the time so it didn't make sense to volunteer. Sigh.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #183 on: August 9, 2019, 10:56:23 am »
There's a dev and QA role on there aswell if anyone is looking.

Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #184 on: September 10, 2019, 10:53:45 am »
Anyone here certified 'Lean Sigma Six' or familiar with LS6?

cheers

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #185 on: September 11, 2019, 01:07:04 pm »
Amazon do a Cloud Practioner certification which is a good starting point. It isn’t overly technical but gives a good insight into the features of AWS. Do all their self study, think the exam is £90
Well worthy doing.

I'm in a fulltime AWS Role in our company and have been for the last 14 months. The business is advising the 'on-prem'/legacy Infrastructure staff that that area of the business will shrink by about 90% over the next 3 years, so they are wise to invest time into up-skilling in cloud areas.

I just cant see how the cloud wont take over.....(if you dont believe it already has).
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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #186 on: September 11, 2019, 08:15:45 pm »
Might sound daft but I don’t have a clue we’re to start.

What is the best course to learn coding for beginners?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #187 on: September 11, 2019, 08:47:39 pm »
Might sound daft but I don’t have a clue we’re to start.

What is the best course to learn coding for beginners?

There are free courses on Coursera. I've done one on Python, though I didn't finish it. Not to do with the course content which was great, I just can't quite catch the bug for coding even though I want to!

https://www.coursera.org/learn/python/home/welcome

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #188 on: September 11, 2019, 09:54:36 pm »
There are free courses on Coursera. I've done one on Python, though I didn't finish it. Not to do with the course content which was great, I just can't quite catch the bug for coding even though I want to!

https://www.coursera.org/learn/python/home/welcome

Thanks mate I’ll have a look at that site.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #189 on: September 11, 2019, 11:51:40 pm »
Anyone here certified 'Lean Sigma Six' or familiar with LS6?

cheers
I know someone who is. Can put you in touch. Might help to know why. Pm if it's fairly urgent , don't pop in here much.
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Offline Buck Pete

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #190 on: September 12, 2019, 09:56:52 am »
I know someone who is. Can put you in touch. Might help to know why. Pm if it's fairly urgent , don't pop in here much.

Cheers Paul

Nah, its not urgent mate but thanks!!!

I was just wondering about the benefits of certification as the concept of LS6 looks quite interesting and wondered if many companies employed its methodologies etc.?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #191 on: September 12, 2019, 03:28:31 pm »
Might sound daft but I don’t have a clue we’re to start.

What is the best course to learn coding for beginners?

Python is where a lot of people start, but what do you want to do with the skills?

There's tonnes of free stuff out there, knowing what you want to achieve will help. You might not even know, but having a goal will keep you motivated.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #192 on: September 12, 2019, 10:02:39 pm »
Python is where a lot of people start, but what do you want to do with the skills?

There's tonnes of free stuff out there, knowing what you want to achieve will help. You might not even know, but having a goal will keep you motivated.

I just want to have a look into it at the moment and get a feel for it but it could lead into a job etc. further down the line.


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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #194 on: September 16, 2019, 06:13:46 pm »
Python is where a lot of people start, but what do you want to do with the skills?

There's tonnes of free stuff out there, knowing what you want to achieve will help. You might not even know, but having a goal will keep you motivated.

I'd recommend something like Java which has a wealth of applications - professional and not.

Python is more of a scripting language like Perl or Ruby etc.

Java is a terrific language with a very strong OOP component, though Python, Ruby and Perl are also great in their own way.

Also simple web scripting - look at learning HTML and php. Look also at stuff like MySQL (Which is free as well) and then take a look at interfacing and querying/web servers and the like

There are a wealth of free courses and also udemy, PluralSight and a ton of great Pro sites to choose from.
Quote from: tubby on Today at 12:45:53 pm

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #195 on: September 19, 2019, 12:14:37 pm »
Hi Guys

Any of you contracting at the moment?

I'm looking at moving into contracting and wondered if you are enjoying it and was after some general chat before taking the plunge

I'm a Telecoms/IT Project manager and some of the rates on offer are very inviting.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #196 on: September 20, 2019, 02:17:12 pm »
Hi Guys

Any of you contracting at the moment?

I'm looking at moving into contracting and wondered if you are enjoying it and was after some general chat before taking the plunge

I'm a Telecoms/IT Project manager and some of the rates on offer are very inviting.

I've done it over the years - it's a bit meh being away from friends and family, but you can have fun.

Must do's if you contract;

* Stay somewhere cheap to make it worthwhile
* Join a gym and go to it every night
* Stay off the ale

:)
Quote from: tubby on Today at 12:45:53 pm

They both went in high, that's factually correct, both tried to play the ball at height.  Doku with his foot, Mac Allister with his chest.

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #197 on: September 24, 2019, 05:43:12 am »
I'm thinking of moving from a fairly specialist consultant role, knowing a couple of bits of enterprise software and the business process around it to a far more generic DBA role . Does anyone have experience of doing this or vice-versa? Any regrets, or best decision you ever made?   I'm utterly bored with the knowledge I'm gaining , I'm hoping that a DBA role would allow me the opportunity to work in different sectors, though unless I move every few years I suspect I'd tire of every industry I'm in, though ideally I'd find one that suits and stay there till I can hang up my keyboard.
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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #198 on: September 24, 2019, 03:17:06 pm »
I've done it over the years - it's a bit meh being away from friends and family, but you can have fun.

Must do's if you contract;

* Stay somewhere cheap to make it worthwhile
* Join a gym and go to it every night
* Stay off the ale

:)


I'm an IT PM and I see adverts for consultancy roles all the time for crazy money. But I always wonder where the catch is.

I guess it's the lack of stability in terms of not knowing how long you will be in the role, the location etc...?

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Re: RAWK IT professionals - any career advice?
« Reply #199 on: September 24, 2019, 10:06:33 pm »
I'm an IT PM and I see adverts for consultancy roles all the time for crazy money. But I always wonder where the catch is.

I guess it's the lack of stability in terms of not knowing how long you will be in the role, the location etc...?
I have the option of going into a freelance consultancy role but looking at the figures, I have to consider sick pay, holiday pay, car allowance, life insurance, health insurance, critical illness cover, dental plan, holiday insurance, and so many other benefits I get from being a full time employee in my current role.  It's not just how much it would cost you to replace all of those things but the cost of finding the best deals, the cost of renewing them each year, the time to do tax returns, being away from home, etc etc that make being employed a much easier way of life than contracting.  Obviously that's not the case for everyone but for me I don't think the maths really adds up.
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